Waite Hoyt's National Pastime Card

Something Unusual

Waite Hoyt’s National Pastime Card

Check out Waite Hoyt’s National Pastime card:

That might not look extremely unusual to you at first glance. Compare it, however, to the sample right handed hitting pitcher card we discovered earlier:

And, to drive the point home, check out the out/hit card we came up with last time:

Hoyt’s card is strange because he’s got a 14 at 12, which is not what we expect there. He’s right handed, which means we’d expect a 25 there.

He’s also got a 33 on 13. The play results on dice rolls 13 and 36 were swapped; that 29 is on 36.

The strangeness continues with play result 24 at 14. The 27 we’d expect at 14 wound up on 35.

I think we’re looking at a three way switch here:

• Play result 25 moved from dice roll 12 to 41.

• Play result 24 moved from dice roll 41 to 14.

• Play result 27 moved from dice roll 14 to 35.

• Finally, play result 14 moved from dice roll 35 to 12.

I haven’t lookd at every single National Pastime card yet. However, I’m pretty sure that this is one of the most complicated switches, if not the most complicated. It’s one of only two cards that don’t have play result 24 at dice roll 41 as well.

There are two other interesting things to note:

• Play result number 14, which is clearly not an out, is on an “out” dice roll.

• Play result numbers 22, 23, and 40 occupy what are often “hit” dice rolls.

The second point is actually true of all players — and there are other play result numbers that fit that pattern, both for pitchers and for position players. We’ll talk more about them next time.